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JNS.org – To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and remember another notorious event that would come nearly 50 years after the Holocaust, the Baku International Center for Multiculturalism and Baku Slavic University recently organized a high-level round table event titled, “The Holocaust and Khojaly Through the Eyes of Contemporaries.”

An event dedicated to the study and remembrance of the Holocaust held in Azerbaijan, a Muslim-majority nation? Azerbaijan is located at the crossroads of many cultures and has played a seminal role in many aspects and scenes of history, giving the country the responsibility to ensure that the past is recounted accurately. Hence, in Azerbaijan, past is prologue.

Azerbaijan, in antiquity as well as the present day, stands at the crossroads of the celebrated Silk Road and thus at the intersection of numerous civilizations. Given its key geographic importance and its resultant exposure to myriad religions, ethnicities, and cultures, Azerbaijan has a keen sense of history and today maintains a tradition of tolerance and pluralism. This tradition is applied to governance, from the presidency to municipal governments, to business, and to average citizens. It is an ethic that is literally knitted into the fabric of Azerbaijani society.

Azerbaijan has for millennia been a safe haven for a wide array of diverse peoples fleeing persecution and oppression, perhaps most notably, the Jews. Today, the close bilateral relations of Israel and Azerbaijan — owing much to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish Azerbaijanis who left during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, only to return to a free and prosperous Azerbaijan — provide an interreligious, geopolitical and cultural map for how Jews and Muslims can and do act toward one another and how they can and do coexist.

The Middle East, Europe, and other parts of our world would be wise to take note of Jews and Muslims in Azerbaijan and of Israel-Azerbaijani relations.

During this auspicious International Holocaust Remembrance Day event, the Holocaust was discussed by scholars from around the world in the context of studying the proclivities of man and man’s ability to rationalize horror, such as the atrocities of the Nazis. The role of Azerbaijan as a haven for Jews escaping the Nazis was discussed in detail, but also discussed were the horrors to come, ones that befell Jewish and Muslim (and other) Azerbaijanis alike with the fall of the Soviet Union.

The names and geography of the towns and cities involved represent much more than a point on the map. In a historical sense, they have evolved into symbols of cruelty and inhumanity — Babi Yar, Lidice, Oradour, Khatyn.

In the early 1990s, for the Muslims, Christians, and Jews of Azerbaijan, another name was added to the list — Khojaly. The tragedy that transpired in the small Azerbaijani town of Khojaly was also a crime against humanity. Armenian armed forces, like the Nazis before them, committed unspeakable atrocities and barbaric acts. A total of 613 people were killed, 487 people were crippled, and 1,275 civilians — men, women, children and the elderly — were captured, murdered, raped and tortured in manners reminiscent of the Nazis. Most notably, the mass extermination of the civilian population of Khojaly was carried out for one reason — all were Azerbaijanis.

Unlike in the aftermath of World War II, the Nuremberg Trials, and the ongoing hunt for Nazis, the perpetrators of the extermination of Khojaly live freely in the modern-day Republic of Armenia. Many, even today, occupy high-level positions in government — Seyran Ohanyan, Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan, to name a few of the notables. Each participated in atrocities and like the Nazis, they must be brought before an international court to answer for their crimes. Like the Nazis, copious records exist attesting to their involvement and complicity. Unlike the Nazis, who were personally secretive about their crimes, several of these men gave interviews to the media lauding their criminal acts. Their reign, too, will end, as the Nazis did and as Armenia grows out of its warring infancy.

It is important to note that Khojaly did not happen in a vacuum. History will not forget the cruelty of a 20,000-strong Nazi Wehrmacht Armenian legion during WWII. Led by an Armenian nationalist commander called only “Dro,” they participated in death marches and the annihilation of thousands of Jews and others disliked by the Nazi regime.

Unlike modern-day Germany, which meticulously teaches its young people about the horrors that Nazi Germany committed, a profound blemish on the modern Armenian society as a whole is the cult of personality that exists today around Dro and others. In honor of him and others, coins are minted with their likenesses, monuments are erected, and films are produced about their lives and deeds, as if they are some sort of diabolical folk heroes. Austrian historian Erich Feigl has written that in December 1942, Dro visited Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. “Dro had a practice and experience of killing without any compassion, and this strongly impressed Himmler,” Feigl wrote.

As was made clear during the aforementioned conference, we and our progeny must honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and subsequent atrocities like Khojaly. We must honor those like the Allied forces who fought and died to defeat Nazism. Further, we must not ignore contemporary anti-Semitism or Islamophobia and must act against it. This is a commitment not only to the Jewish people, but to all others who stand to suffer the same fate.

The international community remembers the Holocaust, yet rampant antisemitism and xenophobia exists throughout Europe. Yet in independent and secular Azerbaijan, where multiculturalism is a way of life, the pain of the Jewish people is taken upon with brotherly love by fellow Azerbaijanis. Jews have lived in Azerbaijan for 2,600 years, and I say this with pride: the Jews were never betrayed by the Azerbaijanis.

Arye Gut is a noted expert on the former Soviet Union and the Middle East as well as the head of International Society Projects, an Israeli NGO.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2016/03/26/the-holocaust-and-the-khojaly-massacre-through-the-eyes-of-contemporaries/feed/0Knesset Committee Chairman to Azeris: There Never Was Anti-Semitism in Azerbaijanhttp://www.ucsj.org/2016/03/25/knesset-committee-chairman-to-azeris-there-never-was-anti-semitism-in-azerbaijan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=knesset-committee-chairman-to-azeris-there-never-was-anti-semitism-in-azerbaijan
http://www.ucsj.org/2016/03/25/knesset-committee-chairman-to-azeris-there-never-was-anti-semitism-in-azerbaijan/#respondFri, 25 Mar 2016 20:14:43 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=3044Knesset Committee Chairman to Azeris: There Never Was Anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan By: David Israel Azerbaijan Photo Credit: Francisco Anzola The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, headed by MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud), on Wednesday hosted a delegation of the Azeri National Assembly’s International and Inter-Parliamentary Relations Committee, and Hanegbi welcomed the guests and stressed that […]

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, headed by MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud), on Wednesday hosted a delegation of the Azeri National Assembly’s International and Inter-Parliamentary Relations Committee, and Hanegbi welcomed the guests and stressed that the Jewish community in Azerbaijan has never suffered from any displays of anti-Semitism.

Azerbaijan is home to some 12,000 Mountain Jews, the descendants of Persian Jews who have been living there for close to 1,500 years. In 1730 Jews were officially allowed to settle and own property in Azerbaijan. There are some 5,000 Ashkenazi Jews living mostly in Baku. The first Jewish Agency school in the Soviet Union was opened in 1982 in Baku, then capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.

Hanegbi also mentioned the warm relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, which he said are based on a long-standing, brave friendship. He also noted the cooperation between the two countries in many fields, and said Israel and Azerbaijan face similar, and even common challenges.

In 1991, Israel was the second country, after Turkey, to recognize independent Azerbaijan.

In 2012, it was reported that Israel had been granted access to air bases in Azerbaijan through a “series of quiet political and military understandings.” It was also reported that Azerbaijan and Israel jointly examined the use of Azeri air bases and spy drones to help Israeli jets perform a long-range strike on Iran.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2016/03/25/knesset-committee-chairman-to-azeris-there-never-was-anti-semitism-in-azerbaijan/feed/0The improbable romance between Israel and Azerbaijanhttp://www.ucsj.org/2015/01/21/the-improbable-romance-between-israel-and-azerbaijan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-improbable-romance-between-israel-and-azerbaijan
http://www.ucsj.org/2015/01/21/the-improbable-romance-between-israel-and-azerbaijan/#respondWed, 21 Jan 2015 13:55:34 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2785Since its founding in 1948, Israel has found Muslim-majority allies hard to come by. Yet an improbable romance continues to develop between the Jewish state and Azerbaijan. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon took a surprise trip to Azerbaijan in September, marking the first-ever visit by the holder of his position to a Muslim-majority nation in the […]

]]>Since its founding in 1948, Israel has found Muslim-majority allies hard to come by. Yet an improbable romance continues to develop between the Jewish state and Azerbaijan.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon took a surprise trip to Azerbaijan in September, marking the first-ever visit by the holder of his position to a Muslim-majority nation in the Southern Caucasus region. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and former president Shimon Peres have also visited Azerbaijan, and Azeri dignitaries have made the trip to Israel. Though it is most often attributed to a shared interest in combating the threat posed by Iran, experts say the blooming Israeli-Azeri friendship goes much deeper.

“Having a close link with a Shiite-majority nation helps shatter the notion of an Islamic rejectionist front against Israel,” said American Jewish Committee (AJC) Executive Director David Harris, who in 2012 received the “Dostlug” Order of Friendship, Azerbaijan’s highest honor for a foreign citizen, from Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. “For Azerbaijan, located in a tough neighborhood, Israel is a very valued source of economic and strategic assistance.”

While warm Israeli-Azeri ties have received increased media attention of late, the phenomenon is not a new one. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, recalled a sympathetic environment for Jews and Israel when the 52-member umbrella group visited Azerbaijan in 2006.

“We were taken aback by the welcome we received, by the freedom enjoyed by the Jewish community, the fact that Israeli flags fly in the synagogues, that when we met with Jewish students on campus and asked them about anti-Semitism, they said they never experienced it, nor anti-Israel expressions, except from very limited groups,” Hoenlein said.

Dr. Avinoam Idan—the senior fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as well as a University of Haifa professor—told JNS.org that Azerbaijan often comes under attack from violent Islamist groups, including some sponsored by Iran, which borders Azerbaijan in the south. The chief foreign policy concern of Israel in recent years, meanwhile, has been the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program.

“Azerbaijan also views strong ties with Israel and the Jewish world as an important part of achieving strong ties with the United States, which have waned in recent years,” said Idan, who served for seven years in the Israeli embassy in Moscow during the fall of the Soviet Union, when he was intimately involved in establishing diplomacy between Israel and the Caucasus nations.

“Azerbaijan is geopolitically a very strategic country,” said Hoenlein. “There are tens of millions of Azeris living in Iran. The [Jewish community and Israeli] relationship with central Asian countries, generally, I think is very important. They are under pressure from Russia, from Islamic fundamentalists, from Iran, from Wahhabism, and we have to do a [good] job to help bolster them.”

Yet Azeri officials prefer to downplay the role of the Iranian threat in their nation’s relationship with Israel. Mammad Talibov, counselor of political and legal affairs at the embassy of Azerbaijan in Washington, D.C., told JNS.org that “we always point out that our bilateral relations are neither linked with, nor aimed against, any third parties.”

“Simply put, our relationship with Israel is not about Iran,” he said. “It is about Azerbaijan and Israel. We have robust economic relations, especially in the area of technology, [and] defense ties, and [we] work together to promote peace and tolerance. We are also proud that the Azeri Jewish community serves as a bridge between the two nations.”

Asim Mollazade, a member of the Azeri parliament and chairman of the country’s Democratic Reforms political party, expressed the same sentiment. He told JNS.org that Iran “is not so important [of a] factor in making Azerbaijan and Israel friends and partners,” and that the “basis of our relations is [the] historic links between Jews and [the] Azeri people.”

Mollazade, however, did acknowledge that both Azerbaijan and Israel face threats in their respective turbulent regions, chief among them “international terror,” which means “cooperation on security issues is important for our partnership.”

Rafael Harpaz, Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, told JNS.org that there are currently about 30,000 Jews in Azerbaijan, though the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee estimate is about half that number. The Azeri Jewish community includes the “Mountain Jews” (who have lived there since the 5th century AD), Ashkenazi Jews, and a small number of Georgian Jews.

“I have never been in a place like this in my life. You see what happens in Western Europe, but here you can [openly] waive an Israeli flag outside,” Harpaz said in an interview translated from Hebrew.

Last year, when a new Torah scroll was dedicated at a synagogue in the Azeri capital of Baku, the ceremony was attended by Muslim, Russian Orthodox Christian, Albanian-Udi Christian, and Catholic leaders.

“Where else in the world can you see such a thing?” Harpaz asked rhetorically.

Idan said that while anti-Semitism was prevalent in the more Slavic parts of the Soviet Union, Jewish life in the southern Caucasus countries—mainly Azerbaijan and Georgia, where there were large Jewish communities—“was even during Soviet times a completely different reality.” People like Aliyev, the current president, grew up having very positive relations with Jews.

“Aliyev often cites his Jewish teachers as having a very formative influence on him,” Idan said.

“We are proud of [our] centuries-old traditions on inclusiveness,” said Talibov. “Azerbaijan and Israel are friendly countries, and Jewish citizens of Azerbaijan are proud citizens of our nation. We see this as very normal.”

In Israel, meanwhile, there is a large community of Jewish immigrants from Azerbaijan, who made aliyah from the 1970s through the early 1990s, at the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Idan noted that at the government level, Azerbaijan was one of the only Muslim-majority nations that did not publicly criticize Israel during the recent Gaza war, despite pressure to do so from other Muslim countries and from some Azeris who called for an embargo on oil sales to the Jewish state. Azerbaijan supplies 40 percent of Israel’s oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline.

“Israel doesn’t have experience in the field of energy [in areas like drilling, exporting, and financing]. We just recently discovered natural gas, [and] we don’t have many energy engineers,” said Harpaz, meaning Israel learns about those disciplines from Azerbaijan.

Israel, in turn, has greater experience than Azerbaijan in fields such as trade, telecommunications, cyber-technology, agriculture, medicine, and tourism.

“We are willing to share [expertise] with our friends the Azeris,” Harpaz said. “There is a lot of activity by Israeli companies [in Azerbaijan].”

In early December, during the BakuTel-2014 20th Azerbaijan International Telecommunications and Information Technologies Exhibition, President Aliyev himself visited the national pavilion of Israel. Fourteen Israeli companies participated in the exhibition.

Israeli cultural delegations, from groups like the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, have also visited Azerbaijan. Currently, the Azeri national airline Azal flies twice a week between Baku and Tel Aviv. Azal did not stop flights to Israel during this summer’s Gaza war, even when other airlines—including American carriers—temporarily did so.

Aliyev’s positive attitude about Israel was also evident back in 2009, when then Turkish Prime Minister (and now president) Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly chastised Israel’s president, Peres, during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

“When it comes to killing, you (Israel) know well how to kill people,” Erdogan said at the time. What was not publicized, according to Idan, is the fact that immediately after the encounter between Peres and Erdogan, there was a private meeting scheduled between Peres and Aliyev. But after Erdogan’s comments, Aliyev “decided to open his meeting [with Peres] to the media and he made an effort to clearly show his support for Peres and Israel,” said Idan.

Yet Aliyev is not a controversy-free figure. Allegations of financial and electoral corruption have long been associated with his government. Most recently, the Azeri government ordered the arrest of journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who is known for reporting on corruption in Azerbaijan. Many viewed her arrest to be politically motivated.

“Broadly speaking, we are deeply troubled by restrictions on civil society activities, including on journalists in Azerbaijan, and are increasingly concerned that the government there is not living up to its international commitments and obligations,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

Jewish leaders Hoenlein and Harris both took issue with sentiments that internal developments in Azerbaijan should affect Israel’s relationship with the country.

“Countries that have demonstrated friendship to their Jewish communities—even though their records on human rights issues and other things are not perfect, and we know that—we have to try to encourage them to change, but at the same time to recognize the progress that has been made and the importance of the relationship with them,” Hoenlein said.

“Full democracy and transparency can take decades to develop,” said Harris. “And if these were the sole litmus tests for foreign relations, then both the U.S. and Israel would have far fewer partners.”

Despite its warm relationship with Israel, Azerbaijan does not yet have an embassy in the Jewish state. Talibov called this a “technical issue,” saying his country is “working with the Israeli side on the matter.”

Idan said that the lack of an Azeri embassy in Israel may stem from Azerbaijan’s fear of backlash from Iran and other Muslim-majority nations. Yet the case of Azerbaijan proves that “having an embassy is not a condition for the advancement of relations between nations,” he said.

“[Azerbaijan] is a fairly rare example of a Muslim country on the one hand, and on the other hand a country that has such a close relationship with a country like Israel,” said Idan.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2015/01/21/the-improbable-romance-between-israel-and-azerbaijan/feed/0Azerbaijan, Poised to Assume European Rights Post, Detains Prominent Human Rights Advocate Leyla Yunushttp://www.ucsj.org/2014/05/23/azerbaijan-poised-to-assume-european-rights-post-detains-prominent-human-rights-advocate-leyla-yunus/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=azerbaijan-poised-to-assume-european-rights-post-detains-prominent-human-rights-advocate-leyla-yunus
http://www.ucsj.org/2014/05/23/azerbaijan-poised-to-assume-european-rights-post-detains-prominent-human-rights-advocate-leyla-yunus/#respondFri, 23 May 2014 20:39:41 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2504http://www.azadliq.org/content/article/25365863.html Authorities in Azerbaijan have detained the country’s most prominent human rights activist, Leyla Yunus and her husband, Arif Yunus on April, 28.According to witnesses, the couple was at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev International airport on the way to Doha when they were stopped by four security agents and taken for questioning.Mehman Aliyev, who was […]

Authorities in Azerbaijan have detained the country’s most prominent human rights activist, Leyla Yunus and her husband, Arif Yunus on April, 28.

According to witnesses, the couple was at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev International airport on the way to Doha when they were stopped by four security agents and taken for questioning.

Mehman Aliyev, who was seeing them off, told RFE/RL that Leyla Yunus was stopped at the border and told that she can’t leave the country.

Yunus, an internationally recognized activist, told RFE/RL from the airport by telephone that airport security agents and investigators were searching her luggage and that the procedure was being filmed. Agents told her that they would search her apartment and office, and that she may not leave the country.

She said her lawyer, Khalid Bagirov, came to the airport, but is not being allowed to see her.

Bagirov told RFE/RL that she is most likely being detained in connection with the recent arrest of journalist, Rauf Mirkadirov.Mirkadirov was extradited from Turkey and arrested on his arrival to Baku on April 20. He is facing charges of spying for Armenia.

Yunus told RFE/RL early last week that she believed her arrest was imminent.

” For many years they were trying to arrest me. They destroyed my house when I tried to sue the Minister of Interior, Ramil Usubov. Now they arrest anyone they want. It would be funny to arrest me with drug charges. So, they will do it for treason, since these cases are considered behind closed doors. And they will say on state TV that I was working for the Armenians for the last 30 years. The plan is to arrest many human rights activists as a group of spies. The goal is to purge anyone who thinks differently. They don’t want anyone who can speak about political prisoners.”

Yunis, 58, is the founder and director of the Peace and Democracy Institute, a Baku-based NGO. She was actively involved for many years in people-to-people diplomacy with Armenian counterparts. In August 2011, her office was demolished by bulldozers after she protested the forced eviction of hundreds of families to make way for the construction of a new park honoring former Azeri president Heydar Aliyev.

In 2013 she was awarded the French Legion award for her human rights work, and Germany’s Theodor Haecker Prize for international rights advocacy.

Among her many activities, Yunus is known for compiling the names of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners and advocating on their behalf.

The arrest comes only weeks before Azerbaijan is expected to take over the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, a European human rights monitoring body, in May.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2014/05/23/azerbaijan-poised-to-assume-european-rights-post-detains-prominent-human-rights-advocate-leyla-yunus/feed/0The mysteries of Azerbaijan: A Shiite nation embraces its Jewshttp://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/04/the-mysteries-of-azerbaijan-a-shiite-nation-embraces-its-jews/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-mysteries-of-azerbaijan-a-shiite-nation-embraces-its-jews
http://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/04/the-mysteries-of-azerbaijan-a-shiite-nation-embraces-its-jews/#respondTue, 04 Mar 2014 18:36:57 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2280by Rob Eshman Red Village rises up along the Qudiyal River like a Jewish Brigadoon. To get there, you fly 13 hours from Los Angeles to Istanbul, then catch a three-hour flight to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan — a former Soviet country of some 9 million people on the Caspian Sea. From Baku, you […]

To get there, you fly 13 hours from Los Angeles to Istanbul, then catch a three-hour flight to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan — a former Soviet country of some 9 million people on the Caspian Sea. From Baku, you take a bus past churning oil derricks and miles of empty desert, up into the Caucasus, through tiny villages surrounded by apple orchards. After two hours, you arrive in Quba, the capital of Azerbaijan’s northeast region. About a mile past an attractive central mosque, a simple steel bridge spans a wide, mostly dry riverbed and leads directly into Red Village.

One of the first things you see is a large brick building atop which sits — improbably, impossibly — a Jewish star.

About 4,000 people live in Red Village, every one of them Jewish. That makes Red Village the largest all-Jewish settlement outside the State of Israel.

This entirely Jewish town exists in an almost entirely Muslim country — ancient, placid, prosperous. It is also completely unknown to the majority of the world’s Jews. I had to see Red Village to believe it. I had to figure out: What’s the deal with Azerbaijan?

Earlier this month, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev convened 750 journalists, scholars, activists and scientists from around the world to participate in the annual Baku International Humanitarian Forum.

The invitation offered a chance to see for myself a country that, from what I’d heard over the years, has never quite fit the standard American perception of Muslim = Fanatic and Shiite = Really Fanatic.

After all, Iran, also a Shiite nation, lies just across Azerbaijan’s southern border. But while Iran is the Jewish state’s mortal enemy, Azerbaijan is Israel’s largest supplier of oil and a major purchaser of Israeli defense technology. The Shiites of Iran would treat me, an American Jew with a passport full of Israeli stamps, as an enemy. In Azerbaijan, I was an honored guest.

My visit was personally arranged through Azerbaijan’s Western Region Consul General, Nasimi Aghayev. I’m not the first journalist lured to explore Azerbaijan’s incongruities, but I do seem to be the first in my crowd. Few people I talked to about my travel plans beforehand had heard of Azerbaijan, and even fewer of its Jewish connection.

You could fault Azeris for not getting the word out, but in the 22 years since it gained its independence, Azerbaijan has had to focus on rebuilding, not rebranding.

What struck me first when I arrived in Baku is that Azerbaijan is in the midst of a fast transition. Now that its tremendous oil and gas wealth isn’t being siphoned off to feed the Soviet empire, the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) has soared.

For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Azerbaijan was under the rule of the Russian empire, which exploited its resources. When the tsar fell in 1918, Azerbaijan quickly formed a secular republic, the first Muslim majority country in the world to do so. Its parliament immediately granted women the right to vote — a year before the United States did. But the flowering of democracy, commerce and art was brief. The Bolsheviks arrived just 22 months after Azerbaijan declared independence, attacked what they called liberal and decadent Baku Muslims, crushing a rebellion and absorbing Azerbaijan into the USSR.

When Hitler invaded Russia, his brass ring was Baku’s oil, which provided more than 80 percent of the fuel for the Soviet war effort. In 1942, Hitler’s general staff gave him a cake in the shape of the Caucasus. Hitler ate the slice with “Baku” written on it. “Unless we get Baku oil,” Hitler said, “the war is lost.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Baku finally won its independence in 1991. Its first president, Heydar Aliyev, who died in 2003, and his son and successor, Ilham Aliyev, have managed to negotiate lucrative long-term oil and gas contracts that, for the first time, keep Azerbaijan’s money at home and have tilted the former Soviet satellite westward.

Oil money has enabled a modern, busy city with cutting-edge architecture and luxury stores to grow up around the well-preserved walls and narrow cobblestone streets of the Old City. Baku is a cleaner Tel Aviv surrounding a smaller-walled Jerusalem.

What’s even more surprising about Baku is its people. The majority are traditional but secular. Few women wear headscarves — the look is skirts and heels, more Westwood Boulevard than Riyadh.

But Azerbaijan’s tolerance is not a Western import. It’s homegrown, even ancient.

“The multinational, multiconfessional society is one of our assets,” President Aliyev said in the conference’s keynote address. “All nationalities see their religion respected. … This contributes to the building of a civil society.”

For the Jews, that is remarkably true.

“There has never been anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan,” Arye Gut, the Azeri-born founder of the international association Israel-Azerbaijan (AZIZ), told me. Like many Azeris who have immigrated to Israel, he maintains strong personal and business ties to his home country.

In a meeting at his office, Ambassador Elshad Iskandarov, chairman of the State Committee for Work With Religious Organizations, pointed out with some understatement that Azerbaijan has resisted the increasing anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.

Iskandarov, an urbane graduate of Columbia University, theorized that Azerbaijan’s location on the Silk Road international trade route long ago encouraged its people to accept all kinds of cultures.

Or, as a Cambridge-educated Azeri told me later in my week there, “Our philosophy is, ‘Why fight when you can trade?’ ”

Like many Azeri officials I met, Iskandarov could rattle off the names of famous Azerbaijani Jews — who are pretty much the most famous Azerbaijanis, period — among them pianist Bella Davidovich, Nobel Prize physicist Lev Landau, Israeli singers Sarit Hadad and Yaffa Yarkoni, pioneering physician Gavril Ilizarov and chess master Garry Kasparov, who is half Armenian.

There is also writer Lev Nussimbaum, aka Essad Bey and Kurban Said, author of the most famous Azeri novel, “Ali and Nino.”

“The magic of this town lies in the mystical bond between its races and its people,” the book’s narrator said. “The race of a peaceful Caucasus is forged on the anvil of Baku.”

“When we are talking about Jews,” he said, “this is tolerance of our own past.”

I asked how the government keeps extremist Islamic ideologies from taking root in Azerbaijan. Iskandarov pointed to his bookshelf, where there were thick tomes of sermons prepared by government-appointed imams and distributed to mosques — local imams were encouraged not to veer from these more liberal teachings. There is freedom of religion — but not too much.

Many countries, including Iran, say they love the Jews — it’s just Israel they can’t stand. Azerbaijan is different. It has strategic defense partnerships with Israel, and the two countries conduct $5.5 billion in trade annually.

Last year, Iran protested and even threatened “consequences” after the Azerbaijan foreign minister announced an official visit to Israel. President Aliyev refused to back down.

“I know who my friends are,” Aliyev said, “and who my enemies are.”

During the tsarist regime, Jews were not permitted to buy land in Baku. But a local Muslim stepped up and bought the property for what became one of the city’s two synagogues. On Friday night, as Sabbath services concluded, I went there to meet Milikh Yevdayev, chairman of the Religious Community of Mountain Jews.

About 10,000 of Azerbaijan’s 15,000 Jews live in Baku. The synagogues serve different groups — one is Ashkenazi style, staffed by a Chabad rabbi, and the other, the one I visited, is well-appointed and known as the New Synagogue, for the Mountain Jews.

The Mountain Jews trace their lineage to ancient Persia. They speak Juhuri, a blend of Farsi and Hebrew; if you close your eyes, you’re back again on Westwood Boulevard. Historians believe the Mountain Jews first settled in the Caucasus in the fifth century. It is their descendants who settled Red Village.

“We live like brothers,” Yevdayev assured me.

On the wall of the synagogue are photos of the stout, middle-aged Yevdayev and other synagogue leaders alongside President Aliyev, as well as the country’s leading imam and the head of the Armenian church.

The $2 million it took to build the synagogue last year came directly from President Aliyev. Some 60 people attend Shabbat services weekly, and 300 on the holidays. Two schools, entirely paid for by the government, serve 300 students. The sanctuary has some local touches — a central pulpit, Oriental carpets, stacks of the local Jewish newspaper, which is printed in Russian.

Yevdayev is originally from Red Village. His daughter now lives in Brooklyn. I ask him if Jews are leaving Red Village and Baku for Israel and elsewhere.

“They go; they come back, they go — it’s not a trend,” he said. “You’ll see.”

The next day, I saw. Our bus of some 30 conference participants followed a new highway north from Baku into the foothills of the Caucasus.

Quba is a medium-sized city, surrounded by pear and apple orchards. In 1730, the Khan Huseyn Ali decreed that Jews could own property in his district. Their settlement, Red Village, resembles a more prosperous version of the many small towns we had passed en route.

“There are many Jewish billionaires,” our tour guide informed us on the way up.

He wasn’t kidding. Since independence, Azeri Jews have flourished in business, especially in Russia, and they have spent millions restoring the old village, even buying up properties there as a link to their past. The soccer field and park look new, the stone, brick and wood homes refurbished. It was quiet — we arrived on Shabbat, when the cafes, restaurants and small businesses were closed. Azerbaijan’s Jews are as traditional, and as secular, as its Muslims.

Inside Red Village’s main synagogue, services were just letting out. There was a cacophony of kids and young men. The only sign that we were in the exotic East: Visitors are asked to remove their shoes, as in a mosque. The floor of the shul’s rich wooden interior is covered in Persian carpets.

Boris Simanduyen, chairman of the community, told us that until the Bolshevik Revolution, the town had 13 synagogues. Back then, the village was called Krasnaya Sloboda (Red Settlement) in Russian and had 18,000 residents. Now, Red Village has a Hebrew school with 60 students and three synagogues. President Aliyev’s administration pays for the heating oil for them all.

Simanduyen is a serious elderly man who speaks not a word of English or Hebrew. Through an interpreter he told me the town receives many visiting Jewish groups, people like me who can’t quite believe such a place exists. As if to offer more evidence, he called over a teenage boy who opened a prayer book and recited a Hebrew prayer at a breakneck pace.

Outside the synagogue, we ran into a group of high-spirited boys, most wearing kippot. They posed for pictures, and shouted back “hello,” and “Shabbat shalom!” to our own greetings.

“Our neighbors say, ‘Why do you send oil to Israel,’ ” our guide, a Shiite, said, summarizing the Azeri attitude toward the Jewish minority. “We say, ‘The Jews are our brothers. They make a big contribution to the economy and culture of Azerbaijan.’ ”

That contribution is beginning to extend beyond the historic. A subtext of every speech we heard and visit we made was that Azerbaijan is seeking international support for its ongoing conflict with Armenia, which, in 1992, fought a brutal war with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and has occupied that region since, in contravention of United Nations resolutions.

The continued occupation by force of some 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory consumes Azeri political discourse.

Near Quba, we pulled into a brand-new memorial complex of angular concrete and polished granite. Just beside it lay mounds of human skulls, recently excavated at the site of a massacre in 1918 of Muslim and Jewish residents by Bolshevik, Armenian and Christian forces. About 600 people were slaughtered by what our guide referred to as “Armenian gangsters.” The exhibit looked as if it had been airlifted directly from Yad Vashem.

In a meeting with Yevda Abramov, Azerbaijan’s sole Jewish parliamentarian, a big, deep-voiced Mountain Jew, we asked what message he wanted us to convey to American Jews.

“Please present the Armenian holocaust against us,” he said, then launched into a tirade on the “double standard” in how the world only cares about Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and ignores Armenia’s occupation of Azeri land.

Of course, as in any tribal-religious-political conflict, the Armenians level their own accusations of land grabs and massacres. Azerbaijan, a country suffering from occupation, has allied itself with Israel, a country trying to extricate itself from being an occupier. The situation is not as ironic as it seems when you look at a map. Squeezed between Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialist Russia to the north and Iran’s mullahs to the south, Azerbaijan sees in Israel a natural ally also ringed by enmity.

Israeli military technology and know-how is helping the once-poor Azerbaijan develop an army that can credibly threaten to take Nagorno-Karabakh back by force. In exchange, one expert told me, Israel gets to park drones and perhaps even launch operations right at the edge of the Iranian border.

“The Almighty presented us with oil, but not with neighbors,” Abramov said with a sigh.

And, just like Israel, Azerbaijan’s historic feud with its neighbor constantly threatens to keep dragging it into the bloody past, even as it carves out a uniquely promising future.

Political strife has challenged Azerbaijan’s journey to full-fledged democracy. Earlier this year, the government announced the results of its presidential election before it was held, making the country a punch line on “The Daily Show.” But in their 21 years at the helm, the Aliyevs have transformed a communist police state into a catpitalist, struggling semi-democracy — all the while negotiating a treacherous neighborhood.

“Don’t write off Azerbaijan just yet,” Matthew Bryza, former United States ambassador to Azerbaijan, told CNN last month.

Indeed, the country’s long history of tolerance may yet ensure its success.

In Baku, I told Ambassador Iskandarov how much I’d enjoyed the local food, a blend of Persian and Turkish cuisines. He told me I should really visit the best Azerbaijani restaurant in the United States — Baku Palace, in Brooklyn. Its owner, he said, is a Jew.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2014/03/04/the-mysteries-of-azerbaijan-a-shiite-nation-embraces-its-jews/feed/0Baku gives land for Jewish cultural center, kosher restauranthttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/12/13/baku-gives-land-for-jewish-cultural-center-kosher-restaurant/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=baku-gives-land-for-jewish-cultural-center-kosher-restaurant
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/12/13/baku-gives-land-for-jewish-cultural-center-kosher-restaurant/#respondFri, 13 Dec 2013 21:02:22 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=2020(JTA) — The city of Baku in Azerbaijan has allocated land for the construction of a Jewish cultural center and the Azeri capital’s first kosher restaurant. The municipality has given the Mountain Jews, one of the country’s three Jewish communities, approximately 600 square yards for the restaurant, which will be part of a three-story cultural […]

]]>(JTA) — The city of Baku in Azerbaijan has allocated land for the construction of a Jewish cultural center and the Azeri capital’s first kosher restaurant.

The municipality has given the Mountain Jews, one of the country’s three Jewish communities, approximately 600 square yards for the restaurant, which will be part of a three-story cultural center that the community intends to build on the land, according to a report Monday by Russia’s Jewish News Agency.

The opening “will be a landmark event for Jewish life in Baku,” a statement on the website of the Mountain Jews’ community read. “The creation of such a complex will serve our foreign guests, who are experiencing some difficulties in Baku with kosher meals as the country has few kosher products.”

Rabbi Shneor Segal, chief envoy to Azerbaijan of Chabad, confirmed to JTA that Baku does not have any strictly kosher restaurants. Chabad also is planning to open a large cultural center in Baku with help from the authorities sometime before 2016 that will have a kosher restaurant, he said.

Azerbaijan has a Jewish population of about 20,000, according to the World Jewish Congress, with 75 percent residing in Baku. Despite strong traditionalist tendencies, most Azeri Jews are not observant, Segal said.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/12/13/baku-gives-land-for-jewish-cultural-center-kosher-restaurant/feed/0Iranian sentenced to jail in Azerbaijan for plot on Israeli Embassyhttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/10/15/iranian-sentenced-to-jail-in-azerbaijan-for-plot-on-israeli-embassy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=iranian-sentenced-to-jail-in-azerbaijan-for-plot-on-israeli-embassy
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/10/15/iranian-sentenced-to-jail-in-azerbaijan-for-plot-on-israeli-embassy/#respondTue, 15 Oct 2013 14:31:19 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1951(JTA) — An Iranian citizen was sentenced to 15 years in jail in Azerbaijan for planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Baku. Bahram Feyzi, who was arrested in March and accused of being an Iranian spy along with drug possession, was sentenced on Friday in the Baku Court on Grave Crimes, the French […]

]]>(JTA) — An Iranian citizen was sentenced to 15 years in jail in Azerbaijan for planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Baku.

Bahram Feyzi, who was arrested in March and accused of being an Iranian spy along with drug possession, was sentenced on Friday in the Baku Court on Grave Crimes, the French news agency AFP reported. He also was accused of being an Iranian secret service agent.

Twenty-two people were arrested in Azerbaijan in March on suspicion of planning to attack American, Israeli and Jewish targets, including the U.S. and Israeli embassies, a Jewish Agency for Israel facility and an American fast-food restaurant. At least seven people have been sentenced to jail time for the planned attack, according to AFP.

In January, at least two men were arrested after planning an attack on two Israeli teachers and Chabad emissaries at the Or Avner school in Baku.

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/10/15/iranian-sentenced-to-jail-in-azerbaijan-for-plot-on-israeli-embassy/feed/0With eyes on neighbors, Azerbaijan and Israel intensify tieshttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/10/01/with-eyes-on-neighbors-azerbaijan-and-israel-intensify-ties/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=with-eyes-on-neighbors-azerbaijan-and-israel-intensify-ties
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/10/01/with-eyes-on-neighbors-azerbaijan-and-israel-intensify-ties/#respondTue, 01 Oct 2013 15:14:11 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1929BAKU, Azerbaijan (JTA) — With less than a month to go until presidential elections, the moustachioed smile of Ilham Aliyev stares down at his countrymen from giant posters scattered around this bustling metropolis on the Caspian Sea. The Azerbaijani president has been in office since 2003 and is widely expected to be re-elected, extending the […]

]]>BAKU, Azerbaijan (JTA) — With less than a month to go until presidential elections, the moustachioed smile of Ilham Aliyev stares down at his countrymen from giant posters scattered around this bustling metropolis on the Caspian Sea.

The Azerbaijani president has been in office since 2003 and is widely expected to be re-elected, extending the leadership of the Aliyev clan into its third decade. Aliyev’s father, Heydar, held the post for a decade prior to his son’s ascension.

Ilham Aliyev’s tenure has brought greater prosperity to this young country, but it has come at a price: Widespread corruption and human rights abuses have earned Azerbaijan a dismal ranking in a survey of democratic standards in 166 countries conducted last year by the Economist magazine.

But to the West — especially to Israel — Aliyev is a trusted friend and the key to a transformation that has developed oil-rich Azerbaijan from a small nation in Iran’s shadow to a strategic ally and an avid consumer of Israeli arms.

“The partnership between Israel and Azerbaijan is complicated by political factors, but ultimately it is moving forward because it makes sense from an economical point of view,” said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union and ex-director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “Azerbaijan is reliable enough as a supplier of oil for Israel, and Israel is a reliable supplier of high-tech and arms.”

Israel has long cultivated ties with this Muslim nation, which has enormous reserves of oil and natural gas and a 380-mile southern border with Iran. The Jewish state opened an embassy in Baku in 1992, just one year after Azerbaijan gained independence from the former Soviet Union.

But Azerbaijan, mindful of antagonizing its neighbor, the partnership has mostly flourished in the shadows. Azerbaijan still does not have an embassy in Israel, despite expanding bilateral trade now pegged at $3 billion a year. In 2009, Aliyev compared relations with Israel to an iceberg: “nine-tenths submerged.”

The elder Aliyev, a former KGB boss, handled the relationship with Israel “with great care during those early and unstable times,” according to Avinoam Idan, a senior research fellow at John Hopkins University’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute.

In recent years, however, the partnership has grown much more open — and more robust.

In 2011, the Israeli defense contractor Aeronautics opened a factory for military drones in Azerbaijan. The following year, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries sold Azerbaijan $1.6 billion worth of weapons — a deal that amounted to 43 percent of Azerbaijan’s total expenditure on arms in 2012. Azerbaijan now supplies a whopping 40 percent of Israel’s oil consumption.

In May, Elmar Mammadyarov became the first Azerbaijani foreign minister to visit Israel. Mammadyarov met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres along with a dozen other ministers and promised that the opening of an Azerbaijani embassy was “just a matter of time.”

Israel’s increasingly cozy ties with Azerbaijan have grown in the wake of a crisis in the country’s relations with Iran. Though traditionally mistrustful of the Islamic Republic’s penchant for exporting revolutionary zeal, Azerbaijan had strived to maintain good relations, signing a non-aggression pact with Tehran in 2005.

But relations deteriorated in 2009 after Iran cracked down on the large minority of ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Iran. When Azerbaijan protested, Iranian officials threatened to raise territorial claims.

Israel was named as a factor in the dispute last year when Azerbaijani officials revealed plans by local extremists, aided by Iran, to blow up the Israeli and American embassies in Baku.

Also last year, Iran accused Azerbaijan of helping Israel assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists and gather intelligence. The situation was inflamed further by a Reuters report that Israel planned to use Azerbaijani airfields in the event of a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israeli and Azerbaijani officials denied the report.

“These reports sound like James Bond stories, and that’s exactly what they are,” said Raphael Harpaz, Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, at his office at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

That said, “Azerbaijan has taken a courageous stand against efforts to destabilize the region,” Harpaz added — an obvious reference to Iran.

Harpaz said anti-Semitic sentiment, prevalent in much of the Muslim world, is virtually nonexistent in Azerbaijan, a secular country with guaranteed freedom of worship and — unlike its abstemious southern neighbor — teeming with bars and nightclubs where scantily dressed women dance to Turkish and Russian pop hits.

“Azerbaijan’s economic success and relatively liberal attitudes form a contrast with Iran’s restrictive policies and a viable alternative, which is probably making the Mullah regime uncomfortable,” Idan said.

Despite Baku’s attempts to keep the peace, American diplomats believe Azerbaijan considers Iran “a major, even existential security threat,” according to an assessment in a leaked diplomatic cable from 2009. The country’s cooperation with Israel “flows from this shared recognition,” the cable read.

Idan says Azerbaijan’s closeness with Israel is actually aimed at a different regional foe: Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the west, against whom Azerbaijan has fought two wars in the last century over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Aliyev considers the conflict unfinished, which has led to American and European reluctance to sell him weapons he can’t obtain elsewhere. Israel has no such qualms.

Israel, too, may have broader reasons for cultivating ties with Azerbaijan. The Jewish state has long sought out non-Arab moderate Muslim nations as allies as a counterweight to the hostile Muslim nations that surround it.

Eldar Mamedov, an Azerbaijan-born political adviser at the European Parliament in Brussels, wrote in January that Israel sees Azerbaijan as a replacement for Turkey, whose once-close partnership with Israel hasn’t recovered from the 2010 storming by Israeli commandos of a Turkish ship bound for Gaza.

But Fuad Akhundov, a historian and government spokesman, told JTA that personal bonds between Jews and Azerbaijanis over the centuries has helped cement the bond.

“Jews here have always been perceived as promoters of progress, part of the elite, as something which holds potential,” Akhundov said. “These positive feelings had a role in the establishment of warm bilateral ties.”

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/10/01/with-eyes-on-neighbors-azerbaijan-and-israel-intensify-ties/feed/0Jewish shtetl in Azerbaijan survives amidst Muslim majorityhttp://www.ucsj.org/2013/09/03/jewish-shtetl-in-azerbaijan-survives-amidst-muslim-majority/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jewish-shtetl-in-azerbaijan-survives-amidst-muslim-majority
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/09/03/jewish-shtetl-in-azerbaijan-survives-amidst-muslim-majority/#respondTue, 03 Sep 2013 14:07:32 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1881(JTA) — Even at 70, Yedidia Yehuda can negotiate a narrow mountain path in northern Azerbaijan with a confidence easily mistaken for carelessness. “You take care not to fall yourself and don’t worry about me,” he tells a visitor following him toward a small town on the northern bank of the Kudyal river, where 2,000 […]

]]>(JTA) — Even at 70, Yedidia Yehuda can negotiate a narrow mountain path in northern Azerbaijan with a confidence easily mistaken for carelessness.
“You take care not to fall yourself and don’t worry about me,” he tells a visitor following him toward a small town on the northern bank of the Kudyal river, where 2,000 Jews have lived for nearly three centuries in their own shtetl, one of the world’s few remaining all-Jewish towns outside Israel.
A few twists down the slope, Yehuda proudly points to the red roof of a new and spacious structure decorated with sculpted beige limestone panels that rises from the jagged rocks and dusty flowerbeds on the mountainside. It is the tomb of Rabbi Gershon ben Reuven, leader of this little-known community until his death 122 years ago.
The building was erected last year as part of a massive renovation and construction effort, courtesy of Krasnaiya natives who left this rural town to pursue lucrative careers elsewhere. The building projects are to honor the town’s rich past.
Over the years, the community known as Mountain Jews has endured pogroms by Persian warlords, repression under communism and the rise of post-Soviet nationalism. But the need for external funding highlights pressing questions about the future of this Jewish island that continues over time to lose its young to the rapidly growing cities depopulating the Azeri countryside.
“Many have left, young and old, myself included,” says Yehuda, who divides his time between Krasnaiya and Or Akiva, Israel. “It’s good because out there we can earn enough to support the community. But it’s bad because it means the current population is a fraction of our past numbers.”
According to Yehuda, the town had 8,500 Jews only two decades ago, but has lost 75 percent of its population to Israel, Moscow and the Azeri capital, Baku. The community’s former chief rabbi, Adam Davidov, left recently for Jerusalem.
The silver lining in the exodus has been hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from well-to-do natives who in the past two years have financed the construction of buildings, modernized burial facilities and transformed the town’s mikvah into an impressive glass-domed tower.
Krasnaiya Sloboda also is seeing the construction of the world’s first museum of Mountain Jews. The project is being paid for by STMEGI, a foundation promoting the heritage of Mountain Jews and headed by the Krasnaiya-born businessman German Zacharayev, who lives in Moscow.
In Azerbaijan, Mountain Jews, or Juhuro, are the largest of three Jewish communities, followed by Ashkenazim and Georgians. With lineage dating to the Jews of ancient Persia, Juhuro are believed to have settled in the region 1,000 years ago. They speak Juhuri, a mix of Farsi and ancient Hebrew.
“Here, communists were less successful than elsewhere in encouraging Jews to assimilate because of our ancient and cohesive tradition,” Yehuda says.
The best time to witness the special attachment between Krasnaiya Sloboda and its residents, past and present, is around Tisha b’Av, the Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of both ancient Temples. Just ahead of the fast, the town’s population doubles overnight as Krasnaiya natives from all over the world return to visit the graves of their ancestors. Some, like Yehuda, stay for several months.
Upon arriving, the returnees blend right back in to a community that despite not being very observant seems immune to the rapid modernization gripping their country. The nearby town of Quba boasts 24-hour supermarkets, Internet cafes and even a luxury spa hotel. But in Krasnaiya, toddlers accompany Jewish women wearing tichel head coverings and aprons to buy groceries from the kosher shops and convenience stores as they prepare for the High Holidays feasts.
In the evening, after the older children finish studying in the local yeshiva, dozens of men accompany them down potholed alleyways to Kulkati Synagogue, a massive wood-paneled building with 30 windows and even more Persian carpets covering every inch of its floor. The town, spread out across 120 acres, has another 12 synagogues, most of them inactive. Among Russian Jews, the town once was known as “little Jerusalem.”
In a custom reminiscent of the mosques in this predominantly Shi’ite country, visitors to Kulkati take off their shoes before entering. Other customs borrowed from neighbors are common among older Jews, who bury toenail clippings and hair and believe in evil spirits, part of an elaborate system of superstitions.
Conscious of their community’s uniqueness, Krasnaiya’s young Juhuros say they are determined to pass on the torch.
“I will stay here and make a life here,” says Maxim Menachem, 18, an unemployed yeshiva graduate. “I have no plans to leave.”
But some elders are unconvinced. According to the United Nations, Azerbaijan has lost approximately 10 percent of its rural population since gaining independence. Across the region, the urbanization impulse, coupled with Zionist fervor and a desire to live in established Western democracies, has pushed about 1.5 million Jews from former Soviet countries to emigrate since 1991. But unlike other post-Soviet areas, anti-Semitism is not the reason here.
“These young guys, they are emotionally attached but they will not stay here,” says Elazar Nisimov, the community’s rabbi and ritual slaughterer. “Azerbaijan is only 22 years old and the job market hasn’t expanded to the countryside. They need to start their lives, get professional experience and earn a living. So they’ll move to Baku, Moscow, Tel Aviv. Then maybe they will return.”
It was persecution that drew Jews to Krasnaiya in the first place, according to Nisimov. Nearly three centuries ago, the Jews who lived in the hills around Quba asked the regional shah, Hussein Ali, for protection from cross-border raids by Persian troops. The shah agreed, and the relationship between Quba’s ruling house and the Jews deepened under his son and successor, Feteli Khan.
Yedidia Yehuda at the foot of the tomb of Rabbi Gershon ben Reuven in Krasnaiya Sloboda, August 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
Yedidia Yehuda at the foot of the tomb of Rabbi Gershon ben Reuven in Krasnaiya Sloboda, August 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
Today, Feteli Khan’s name appears on street signs in the main street of Quba, Krasnaiya Sloboda’s non-Jewish twin city across the river. Yarmulke-wearing Jews are a common sight at Quba’s gas stations and hardware stores. Some enterprising Quba taxi drivers have even learned to offer “Jewish tours” to anyone they suspect of being American or Israeli.
“Jewish-Muslim relations here could not be better,” says Yevda (Yehuda) Abramov, a Krasnaiya native and Azerbaijan’s only Jewish lawmaker. During a visit from Baku, he sits in the shade of a Jewish tea house with old-timers who chat and play board games as they suck tea through sugar cubes.
Nisimov, meanwhile, is gathering strength for Rosh Hashanah, when he goes from house to house to slaughter chickens for the traditional feast. But he expects to rest on Sukkot, when other rabbis are usually hard at work visiting the temporary huts Jews build in recognition of the instability that for millennia has been an inherent element of Jewish life.
Largely unfamiliar with flight and exile, most Krasnaiyans do not build sukkahs, preferring instead to visit a communal sukkah near the synagogue.
“They all light candles on Hanukkah, but Sukkot is less celebrated here,” Nisimov says. “I guess not everyone here connects to this holiday.”
Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/08/29/news-opinion/world/jewish-shtetl-in-azerbaijan-survives-amid-muslim-majority#ixzz2dq319Gi7

]]>http://www.ucsj.org/2013/09/03/jewish-shtetl-in-azerbaijan-survives-amidst-muslim-majority/feed/0Report: Estimated Jewish Population in the former Soviet Union (FSU)http://www.ucsj.org/2013/07/03/report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu
http://www.ucsj.org/2013/07/03/report-estimated-jewish-population-in-the-former-soviet-union-fsu/#respondWed, 03 Jul 2013 22:08:55 +0000http://www.ucsj.org/?p=1780Researcher Allan Miller has compiled numbers from reports and news articles over the past several years to determine the estimated current Jewish population throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The breakdown within each country may not equal the total for the country because populations for some cities are missing. Estimated Present […]

]]>Researcher Allan Miller has compiled numbers from reports and news articles over the past several years to determine the estimated current Jewish population throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The breakdown within each country may not equal the total for the country because populations for some cities are missing.

Estimated Present Day Jewish Population of the Former Soviet Union

Total: 1.71 million

By country:

Russia – 600,000

Ukraine – 350,000

Belarus – 30,000

Moldova – 15,000

Latvia – 10,000

Lithuania – 4,000

Estonia – 3,000

Georgia – 8,500

Armenia – 200

Azerbaijan – 20,000

Kazakhstan – 15,000

Uzbekistan – 12,500

Tajikistan – 300

Turkmenistan – 1,200

Kirgyzistan – 1,500

By City:

Russia – 600,000

Moscow 200,000

St. Petersburg (Leningrad) 100,000

Kaliningrad 2,000

Amurzel 100

Yekatarinburg (Sverdlovsk) 18,000

Novokuznetsk 2,000

Khabarovsk 6,000 (20,000 in region)

Syktyvkar (Komi Republic) 1,500

Bryank 4,000

Cheboksari (Chuvashai Republic) 393

Ufa 10,000 (13,000 with surrounding area)

Astrakhan 3,000

Ilyinka 5

Vysoki 800 (they are Jewish subotniks)

Volgograd (Stalingrad) 5,000

Derbent 8,500 (600 children of school age)

Buinanksk (Daghestan Republic) 500

Khasavyurt (Daghestan Republic) 500

Orenburg 3,500

Dzerzhinsk 2,000

Novgorod Veliky 1,500

Sochi 3,000

Saltykovka (near Moscow) 500

Omsk 15,000

Krasnoyarsk 15,000

Tula 550

Novosibirsk 12,000

Siberian region 70,000

Rostov-on-Don 30,000 (66,000 in region)

Kazan (Tatar Republic) 10,000

Birobijan 6,000

Magnitogorsk (Chelyabinsk Region) 2,500

Izhevsk 2,500

Kineshma 500

Tver 4,000

Krasnokamsk (near Perm) 300

Vladivostok 1,300

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky 300

Voronezh 10,000

Kamensk-Uralsky 1,000

Perm 7,000

Magadan 1,500

Tomsk 15,000

Ulyanovsk 4,000

Nizhni-Novgorod (Gorky) 5,300

Samara (Kubishev) 11,500

Chelyabinsk 4,900

Saratov 3,400

Stavropol 3,100

Krasnodar Kray 3,000

Daghestan Republic 3,500

Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkaria area) 2,000

Vladikavkaz (north Ossetia Alania) 500

Grozny (Chechen Republic 25

Magas (Ingushetia Republic) 50

Chukotka 40

Ukraine – 350,000

Sevastopol 2,500

Belaya Tserkov 3,000

Mogilev Podolsky 350

Vinnitsa 4,000

Kiev 110,000

Krivoy Rog 12,000

Ternapol 600

Bereznegovatoye (Nikolayev region) 20

Evpatoria (Crimean peninsula) 800 (Karaites)

Chernovtsy 1,000

Dnepropetrovsk 30,000 (+ 20,000 more in region)

Odessa 40,000

Kharkov 50,000

Kirovograd 900

Lvov 2,000

Ivano-Frankovsk 700

Zaporosch 20,000

Mukachevo 100

Makeyevka 2,000

Kersh 1,000

Belarus – 30,000

Minsk 15,000

Brest 200

Lida 250

Borbuisk 1,200

Grodno 600

Mogilev 1,700

Volozhin 11

Moldova – 15,000

Most of the Jews live in Kishinev

Latvia – 10,000

Riga 9,000

Daugavpils 250

Lithuania – 4,000

Vilnius 3,000

Kaunas 600

Estonia – 3,000

Most live in Tallinn, Tartu, Kohtla-Jarve, Narva and Parnu

Georgia – 8,500

Tbilisi 7,000

Rustavi 200 families

Oni 102

Sukhumi (Abkhazia, claimed independence from Georgia)200

Tskhinvali (south Ossetia, “ ) 24

Armenia – 200

Most live in Erevan, Vanadzor and Sevan

Azerbaijan – 20,000

Baku 15,000

Kuba (Krasnaya Sloboda) 3,600

Also in Sheki and Jalilabad

Kazakhstan – 15,000

Almaty 10,000

Karagonda 1,500

Uzbekistan – 12,500

Tashkent 9,000

Bukhara 900

Fergana 800

Andizhan 100

Margelan 40

Also in Samarkand, Namangan and Kokand

Tajikistan – 300

Most live in Dushanbe

Turkmenistan – 1,200

Most live in Ashgabat

Kirgyzistan – 1,500

All live in Bishkik, except for 5 or 6 families totaling 24 people in south of country.